Speech recognition has been introduced as an interface for the various devices; especially operator assistance in call center operations is needed. But when speech recognition is introduced into the call center operations, the recognition performance may deteriorate because the voices of customers include emotion (angry). Previous study reported that the recognition performance of “angry voice”...

Hand-mouth coordination was studied in l-3-day-old human infants by delivering 0.2 ml of sterile 12% sucrose solution intraorally once every 2 min. Sucrose was extraordinarily calming and caused sustained hand-in-mouth contact. The calm state persisted well beyond sucrose termination. Handin-mouth behavior, however, stopped upon sucrose termination, demonstrating stimulus control over this inte...

A physical model of turbulent equipartition (TEP) of plasma angular momentum is developed. We show that using a simple, model insensitive ansatz of conservation of total angular momentum, a TEP pinch of angular momentum can be obtained. We note that this term corresponds to a part of the pinch velocity previously calculated using quasilinear gyrokinetic theory. We observe that the nondiffusive ...

The idea behind pervasive computing is that embedded and invisible technology calms our lives by removing the annoyances. Everyday life, however, is shaped by what people do, how they do it, and how they perceive what they are doing. As a consequence everyday life is difficult to grasp in computational terms. A look at the pervasive computing literature indicates that in a number of pervasive c...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether area wide traffic calming distribution reflects known inequalities in child pedestrian injury rates. To determine whether traffic calming is associated with changes in childhood pedestrian injury rates. DESIGN Small area ecological study, longitudinal analysis of injury rates with cross sectional analysis of traffic calming and method of travel to school. SET...

Exposure to natural environments can have calming and stress-reducing effects on humans. Moreover, previous studies suggest that these benefits may be greater in areas with higher species richness. Our study took advantage of a “natural experiment” to examine people’s behavioral, physiological, and psychological reactions to increases in levels of marine biota in a large aquarium exhibit during...

This paper reports the development of design visions for the future electronic (e-) newspaper. The ambition is to bring together the features of printed newspapers with the possibilities of online media. In an engaged design science research project we together with representatives of the newspaper industry and newspaper readers identified the three design challenges genre awareness, stress and...

This paper proposes a novel feature for detecting anger in dialog speech. Anger is classified into two types; loud HotAnger and calm ColdAnger. Prosody can reliably detect the former but not the latter. We analyze both types of anger dialog in the two-party setting, and discover that they exhibit some differences in the temporal relation of utterances from neutral dialog. We create a dialog fea...

Surgical site infections (SSIs) remain a significant cause of postoperative complications. The risk of death from a medical error in a UK hospital remains one in 300. Increased theatre traffic has been identified as a modifiable determinant of SSI and surgical error. This cross-sectional study for the first time describes the pattern of theatre traffic in a UK cardiac centre. An electronic door...

This study explored how (learning) experiences offered through outdoor experiential programmes, particularly the youth care farm approach, may (or may not) enhance young peoples' ability to recognise and then utilise available resources for personal growth, protection and health promotion. A total of 11 youngsters were asked to look back on their half-year stay on a care farm in the Netherlands...